


o, he doth teach the torches to burn bright

by neville



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Romeo and Juliet Fusion, Autistic Bruce Banner, Drag Queen Thor, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), M/M, Minor Bucky Barnes/Sam Wilson, Non-Binary Thor, Trans Bruce Banner, absolute chaos. very gay, i did not plan this fic and it shows, joe is bruce's twin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:13:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29591238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neville/pseuds/neville
Summary: “It’s hard not to feel self-conscious kissing you. I mean, look at you.”In which two Romeos solve a murder.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Thor, Joe Fixit/Loki
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. when you were young

**Author's Note:**

> so i was a little hesitant about posting this because i have mixed feelings about it (and had no idea if movies fans would enjoy the chaos that is my rendition of joe fixit), but i had such a blast writing this that i hope it finds readers who will have a blast READING it. so i hope u enjoy!

_ he doesn’t look a thing like Jesus  _

_ but more than you’ll ever know _

Joe’s about to put the cigarette out when Bruce opens the front door, and even though it’s now burning his fingers, he deliberately extends another drag out of it as his brother approaches. The reasonable thing to do now would be to hand over the scribbles that quantify his notes – scribbles that only Bruce can read, because even though Bruce’s handwriting eventually neatened out they both started from that abysmal scrawl – but instead he asks, “are you fucking Bucky?”

“No,” Bruce says, refusing to rise to the taunt. Joe’s disappointed. At this time of night, Bruce is usually tired enough to piss off, but he looks awake enough that Joe suspects he’s just downed a mug of coffee. Bruce avoids caffeine for the most part, so it still  _ hits _ ; he’s pre-complacency, pre-dependence. Joe is pre-nothing. “Why?” 

“Cause he’s at your window looking at me,” Joe says, finally stubbing out the embers of his cigarette and sucking absently on the burns they’ve left. “You really aren’t fucking him? What’s he staying over for?” 

“Don’t you have better questions to ask?”

“Humour me.” 

“Mental health,” Bruce says. “Easier to handle with another person. I’ve told him he shouldn’t be living alone – stop putting your hand in your mouth, I’ve got sanitiser, hold on–” 

Bruce is a hand-wringer, a nail-picker; Joe bites them, chews them right down until they hurt. He rolls his eyes as Bruce fusses, but there’ll be some grim statistic about germs in it for him if he resists, and he has better things to think about than the quality of the viral load on his hands. He’s tired, too. This case isn’t pretty. The contaminated crime scene means they’re constantly losing time ruling out the prints and DNA of local law enforcement. Joe thinks it’s the perfect way for a police officer to get away with a crime, but it’s impossible to prove that, hence its efficiency. Unfortunately, police incompetency is astounding enough that it’s only an entertainable idea in passing. 

“I didn’t get much,” he says as he passes his notes over.  Bruce shifts through them, letting out a gentle sigh as he realises that they’re probably heading towards an unsolved case. Joe gets that. They’re not what any detective with even half a sense of justice wants.

“Are you going anywhere?” Bruce asks suddenly, and it piques Joe’s curiosity as much as it piques his protective instinct. Fuck that instinct, but he doesn’t outright  _ hate _ it: his love for his bullied and maligned brother is probably the only love he’ll ever have, and it drives him just as much as the hedonism. Fuck that instinct because Joe would make a great conspiracy theorist if he didn’t have Bruce around tethering him to some kind of morals; then again, being a social justice warrior seems to invite just as much if not more hatred, so at least Joe’s demented love for starting fights on the Internet  _ is _ for a good cause. 

“I can stick around for an hour or two,” he says. “You wanna smoke?” 

He could have a worse brother. It is, in fact, a source of pride to Joe that his brother’s existence and political views piss people off so much. Bruce nods, and leads Joe inside, shutting the door behind him. 

Bucky glances up and gives Joe a half-wave in greeting before returning to whatever he’s watching on his laptop. His laptop is perched on a semi-clean glass coffee table; there aren’t enough mug stains for it to be that old, so it’s a new purchase. Bruce is uncomfortable with owning things, and his house is irritatingly and impractically minimalist, so this is a splurge. Previously, everything from dinner to case files was done at the kitchen table, which is lovingly stained beyond repair. Joe heads for it as instinct, checking the fridge first to see what he can scrounge. He finds a juice box and sips it. Bruce clears the table.

Joe lights a joint, and they quietly pass it back and forth. 

“I met a guy last night,” he says, the words out of his mouth before he can even consider if he wanted to say them. “Gender neutral  _ guy _ , cause they were all kinds of genderfuck and it was great. I didn’t have work so I went out to the drag night since they know how to party. They were just in the audience, not a king or a queen but they were fucking stunning. We flirted a bit. When the club closed I blew them in the street. We went to their house and fucked and yeah they could’ve killed me but I would’ve killed them right back.” He leans back on his chair, pondering. “Breaking some new fucking ground here, but I think I wanna see them again.” 

Bruce has always been a good listener, and it always surprises Joe when he doesn’t mock, as is the usual reaction. “Then why don’t you?” 

“I don’t know what I fuckin’  _ want _ .” 

“Work it out with them. Ask them what they’re open to. Are you really thinking about asking to date them or do you just want to have sex twice a week?” 

Joe concedes that the question is perhaps more of what kind of sexual arrangement he wants. He doesn’t really do the whole dating thing; he isn’t really into it. “There’s another thing.”

“If this is going to be a therapy session, I’m going to start charging.” 

Joe laughs. “I think we’ll both need therapy,” he says, and without letting the comfort of a beat pass, finishes with “they’re in the 1610.”

Bruce goes still for a moment, but he’s  _ Bruce _ and he’s pragmatic so he does little more than sigh and take the joint out of Joe’s hand. Their police district borders 1610, and their departments have  _ never _ gotten along; their rivalry predates even the longest-serving officers, and blood has been spilled because of it. God forbid any cases that cross the avenue where 616 merges into 1610. For Joe to fuck someone from 1610 is classic of him – but risky. The rivalry is bitter. Even Bruce holds a grudge on behalf of his ex-girlfriend Natasha, who was shot in an off-duty scuffle; they had been broken up at the time, and recently, but Bruce had let her stay over for a while during her recuperation. Joe remembers visiting and playing cards with her. 

“Whatever you do,” Bruce says, “don’t get caught. And I know you don’t need to hear this, but just as a general precaution: don’t fall for them. Not even a little.” 

Joe snorts, and finishes the joint. “Thanks for the worry,” he says. “If I get murdered, at least get one back for me.” 

“No promises,” Bruce says dryly, walking Joe to the door. Joe hovers for a moment, feeling something on the tip of his tongue – but something, a feeling he can’t articulate, a mess of brotherly affection and unspoken deeper feelings for last night’s partner that he doesn’t want to acknowledge and uncertainty about taking this particular kind of risk. Bruce looks back at him and sees it all in Joe’s face, a perfect reflection of his. He reads it in the familiar quirks of expression. Joe wishes they didn’t look like the two sides of a mirror. “Are you going to see them now?”

“I might swing by,” Joe says in a way that means  _ yes _ . Bruce smirks and then swallows it, but Joe sees it and scoffs. “Rat bastard! I saw that. Fuck you. I tell you something important, and–” 

“Just go,” Bruce says with a stifled laugh. Joe sniffs haughtily. 

He waits until the door has shut behind him, and runs. 

  
  


Loki curses all the rom-coms ever written as they run their finger against the crack in their window. Joe made about one apology for throwing the rock and then helped himself to some yogurt in the fridge, and now, several hours later, he’s fast asleep in Loki’s bed and hogging the comforter. Loki can’t sleep with his infernal snoring, and a symphony of barking dogs began several minutes ago, so they made a cup of tea and are deciding how long they can leave their window like this. One of the street lamps flickers to its death in the distance like eyelids drooping off to sleep. 

If Loki could sleep, they would dream of glassy penthouses and marble statues of their own fine form; a walk-in wardrobe of emeralds and pitch blacks, a banquet table of the finest cuisine for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They would dream of gems and coins like a dragon’s hoard and wear gold in their ears. 

Loki has their tongue pierced, and considers that it might look better in platinum. Joe wouldn’t notice the difference as long as it was in his mouth. 

Their reverie is interrupted by the sound of a scream in the night – not unusual, of course, but what  _ is _ particularly unusual is that it’s followed by somebody running full-tilt down the road and pursued by a car. Loki rifles in their drawer for their pistol; Joe, fucking fearless as he is, is out of the door first, unarmed and only in a T-shirt and his boxers.  _ Maniac _ , Loki thinks, taking a moment to slip on their coat before they join the case. They can see Joe in the distance, pelting barefoot into the overcast night; Loki is reminded, though can’t explain why the thought comes up, of Ed Norton in the climax of  _ Fight Club _ . They’re in no hurry themself: this is a city, and things like this happen every night, the eternal screech of cars skidding and drifting, drunk people screaming, people screaming as they’re robbed in dark alleyways. 

And then a gunshot rings out in the night, and Loki speeds up a little. Not too fast, of course; it wouldn’t make do to get caught on the hop and get hurt. 

When they arrive, it’s already an established crime scene: Joe is barking at people to keep back, and there’s a body face-down on the sidewalk with a bullet hole in the back of the head. Loki flashes their police badge and the crowds shuffle a few inches back. “Joe,” they say. “You need to go. This is my territory.” 

“And my pants are in your house,” Joe says. Loki rolls their eyes. 

“You have more,” they say. “You need to  _ go _ . Doubtless the police are already on their way. You can’t be caught near a crime scene.” 

Joe takes a step closer to them, and Loki resists the career-preserving desire to push him in favour of taking a small step back. “Listen,” Joe says. “Call me later. That fuckin’ – I think we got a serial killer.” 

“A serial killer? In your territory?” 

“Well, yours now, too.” 

Loki sucks in a breath. “ _ Shit _ ,” they say. “I’ll call you. Take my metrocard.” They pass it into Joe’s hand like an illicit trade, and watch as he disappears into the night, his open shirt flapping in the breeze. Loki has no idea what the fuck it is that they like about him, but Joe is oddly captivating, bent teeth and an overwhelming wheezy laugh. Chaos on legs. 

They hear a siren approaching, and turn to watch the police car arrive. 


	2. apricots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter titles are the songs that the epigraphs are from :)

_ i wanna kiss you in the middle of a party  _

_ i wanna cause a scene  _

_ and i don’t care if anybody’s watching me _

Bruce has only just made his coffee when the phone on his desk starts ringing. The steam is pouring from it and into the air, and he tears open a sugar packet with his teeth as he answers. “616 Police Department,” he says, emptying it into his reusable cup and stirring. Bruce can never quite decide how to take his coffee. “This is Detective Robert Bruce Banner.” 

“Yeah, question. What’s your schedule tonight?”

Bruce sighs. The voice is immediately familiar and immediately grating. “I’m not going to a party with you, Tony. Also, this is an important line; can’t you call my cellphone?”

“You didn’t answer.”

“Because I was making coffee–” Bruce checks the phone in his pocket and registers five missed calls in the past ten minutes, “–and it was with the machine that you have to hit to make it work, and I had to hit it more than once, and I almost broke it trying to fix it. But they keep spending money on riot gear and covering up all the misconduct, so they can’t afford a new one.” 

“Thank God I pay for private security. I just bought you a new coffee machine on Amazon; you’re welcome, it’s coming tomorrow, now you have to come to the party.”

Bruce rues every day he spent living with Tony in college, and further rues every time they ever had sex, because now Bruce is an adult with a job and a life and Tony  _ still  _ has him on speed dial and Bruce won’t ever do anything about it. He only half minds. He minds wholeheartedly when Tony is calling him in the middle of a busy work day when he’s in a bad mood and thinking about checking the evidence locker for amphetamines, but that’s thankfully not every day. 

Bruce would rather die than go to a party. He’s been to some before. Of the ones that weren’t uneventful, all of them went badly. Bruce has blocked out most of the memories by now, but has hazy recollections of a transphobic slur and Joe’s bloody knuckles as they sat on the sidewalk. Joe had gone to community college, not interested in the eye-wateringly dull choking sensation that was full-throated academia – except when it came to their crazy parties. Joe’s ended with unforgettable stories. Bruce’s did not, because he forgot. 

But Tony just bought him a coffee machine, and Bruce  _ cannot _ say no to it because his fist still aches, so he supposes he’s going to another party. He can only pray for it to be uneventful. 

“Text me the address,” Bruce says. “I have to work. I’m on my lunch break in three hours, so you can call back then.” He hangs up, enjoying the feeling of slamming down the receiver. It’s the simple things that keep him going when it feels like he’s wading knee-deep in misery. He takes Joe’s notes out of his pocket and unfolds them onto the surface of his desk, pockmarked with coffee stains. 

It’s like a grainy picture: so many details, but nothing fleshed out. A killer who stalks in a car, slowly accelerating until he floors it; and when the victim can run no longer, lactic acid burning away the use of their legs, he gets out and kills them. There’s only two cases so far, but the connection was immediately visible and Bruce has the unnerving sense that there’ll be more. Witnesses say the man was  _ huge _ , around two metres tall. The car is a big family cruiser registered to a young woman called Nebula, who had reported it stolen two weeks prior to the first murder. She worked as a security guard and had a confirmed alibi for both attacks; when Bruce had inquired why she owned such a large car despite her lack of children, she had explained that she was in a band and drove because she didn’t trust the others behind the wheel. Joe had confirmed that by attending one of their shows. “Wouldn’t trust any of them either,” he had commented dryly. 

So as for who the man is, Bruce knows nothing. Nebula had been a dead end, so the picture remains grainy. Out of focus. 

“Banner,” a voice called, clear and strong over the noise of everybody working. Steve, the captain. “I need to speak to you.”

Steve’s office is like a time warp to the pre-computer age, full of perfectly filed paperwork in lines of lever arch files. His framed artwork is largely pop art nouveau or in the style of old war posters. One is an American flag in the shape of a shield. Steve is the strangest kind of patriot, because he loves America in the same breath that he hates it. At a parent-teacher meeting, with slicked-back hair and hands neatly folded together, Steve would say that he was disappointed that it wasn’t living up to its potential and he knew that it could do better. Bruce should tell him that if he wants change, it starts from  _ outside _ the police department, throwing a Molotov cocktail in through the window. 

Bruce is a revolutionary hypocrite. 

Steve shuts the door behind him.

“Your serial killer sent a letter to the Daily Bugle. It arrived this morning, first class, and describes a murder he committed last night.” He hands over a photocopy. All Bruce can think is that this killer has beautiful handwriting; fucking  _ cursive _ , like something out of the Victorian era, and he feels acid rise up in the back of his throat. “The reason you’re not on the scene right now is because it’s not our crime scene. It’s the 1610’s.” 

Bruce says the kind of word he shouldn’t be saying near Steve Rogers’s ears. “Language,” Steve admonishes lightly. 

“Have we been in contact with the 1610 for details?” Bruce asks, squinting to read the letter. “This guy writes like the Zodiac. I recognise that misspelling.” 

“Captain Rhodes said he’d fax the documents when they finished writing up their first reports. He wouldn’t tell me anything else, including who was working the case. We only know because the intern at the Bugle doesn’t know the border streets and thought it was ours.” 

“ _ Fuck _ this guy,” Bruce says suddenly, and Steve raises his eyebrows, but Bruce pushes the paper at him and gestures to the doodle in place of his signature. Surprisingly, the killer has resisted the narcissistic urge to name himself; though he’s likely waiting for the press to give him a moniker and begin his mythos. “That right there – that’s a nebula, like the girl whose car he stole. We cleared her.” 

“Asshole,” Steve mutters. “Alright. I’ll send you the scan of the letter and the email address of the Bugle intern. He’ll probably tell you everything. Tell me if Rhodes hasn’t faxed you by the end of the day.”

“Who else knows about the letter?” 

“Just you. You can pass it on to Bucky and Sam later. They’re both out.”

Bruce massages his temples when he gets back to his desk, and takes an early lunch break. He emails the intern, and Peter Parker tells him everything in the park over churros. When Bruce gets back to his desk, he has six missed calls from Tony. Against his better judgement, he answers the seventh. 

  
  


Bruce’s idea of dressing up for the party is wearing a purple shirt instead of a white one, and he undoes the top two buttons to give a peek of his chest hair. He’s quite proud of it, a thicket of black curls that blossomed as his jaw squared and his weight redistributed. Tony hires a limousine. Bruce coaxes Bucky into joining them just to get him out of the house, and sneaks him ten dollars for a ride home if he wants to bail. In turn, Bucky calls Sam, who agrees to meet them there. Bruce didn’t mean to invite an entourage, and prays further that the night – so far clear and starlit – remains uneventful. He would text Joe for backup, but knows in the way that he and Joe are two halves of the same whole that Joe will be there already. 

“So,” Tony says, opening a bottle of wine. Bruce accepts a glass under the provision that he’ll drink one and one  _ only _ , thank you, Tony. Bucky and Sam don’t buttress their acceptance. “Are you going to even  _ try _ and get laid tonight, Brucie boy?” 

“Uh, not really. I’m getting a bit old for that.” 

“Then what, pray tell, are you the  _ correct _ age for, Rip van Winkle?” 

“Probably falling in love and getting married and having a house and a car and two point five adopted children. A beautiful house; a beautiful husband; a large automobile kind of thing. Suburban living and IKEA furniture. Starbucks coffee for lunch and drinking mimosas at the afternoon book club.”

“Mm, very  _ Valley of the Dolls _ , but with – like – Magic Earring Ken.” 

Then: “Take out another button,” Tony advises. “You’ll look sexier.” 

“No thanks,” Bruce answers. Next to him, Sam snorts. Three police officers in a line, and none of them bat an eyelid when Tony passes around ecstasy; Bruce politely declines. He could arrest Tony five times over with everything he knows, but there’s an unspoken truce between Tony and the 616. 

The party is at someone’s house that looks more like a mansion than a residence. Bruce never understands why people need this much space, or why they install chandeliers like the one that hangs over his head as they walk in. But he doesn’t understand many things, and they happen anyway. Bruce has always felt like the world was spinning too fast and he had to dizzily stumble along behind. Fuck that. 

“You need to get out, you let me know,” Sam says, squeezing Bruce’s arm before disappearing into the crowd. 

Bruce tries to find an empty space; a wall; a pillar. There’s something going on on the impressive stairwell of the mansion that everyone is transfixed by; he pushes through with relative ease and finds a corner, taking a deep breath. It’s the feeling of people being pressed up against him on all sides; he despises it, makes it feel like he’s being crushed, steals his breath away, rocks pressing down on his chest. This is a pocket of air. 

Someone walks past with a tray of drinks; Bruce, without the kind of self-confidence that just plucks the glass, asks the waiter politely and is served to a short speech about the origin of the wine he’s about to drink. It’s Algerian. Algeria’s wine producing industry dates back to the ancient Phoenicians, apparently. Bruce swirls the wine in his glass before he drinks it, and looks up to the steps. 

He is torn between regretting this moment and knowing he will treasure it for as long as he lives. 

Drag is often called an art form, but until this moment Bruce never quite registered the sheer artistry of it: the queen is stunning, her dress made of vines and leaves and flowers and cascading behind her as if it grows out of the ground wherever she walks. A split in the skirt shows her stilettos, her dark painted toenails; her leg hair is too light to see except when the light catches it and it’s thick like undergrowth. Her makeup is perfect, dramatic, her lips a brown ombre. Her beard is dyed pink like the wig on her head. She’s lip syncing to Mitski’s  _ Nobody _ , crashing to the ground with her performance of lonely grief, every single moment a Renaissance painting. 

Bruce finishes his wine. 

The crowd parts like the Red Sea as the next song starts and the queen walks into the audience, its crown, its ruler; and they push Bruce, pinning him into the corner, and his breath goes short and he leaves as the crowd begins to dance. He finds his way to the bathroom, passing an aquarium that he has to stop to look at first, identifying the fish and watching their little mouths spell out ‘bob’. He could have been a marine biologist. He could’ve been anything. He tucked a gun into his pocket and became a detective. 

He splashes his face in the sink and sighs, returning to the aquarium to watch the comforting patterns of fish swimming, an amalgamation of colours and fins and decoration. 

There’s a face on the other side of the aquarium. A perfectly made up face, but sans the majestic curly pink wig. Bruce’s face can’t help but split into an awkward smile. The queen grins back at him, and Bruce can’t do this anymore, doesn’t know what to do with his face or how to arrange it. He stands up straight, his cheeks a fiery red. The queen laughs, and it reverberates around the room. Bruce has never seen anything more beautiful. 

“Sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t help it.” 

“It’s okay,” Bruce says. “I’m, uh, autistic. I can’t really look people in the eye.” 

“I assume that’s why you’re in the bathroom,” the queen says, and Bruce watches, somewhat stunned, as she opens the cabinet above the sink and produces a packet of makeup wipes. The eyelashes come off first; there’s something strange about seeing them loose, a strip of curled black hairs with the off-white hue of glue along the lash line. Bruce is transfixed watching the makeup disappear and make way for the lightly reddened face beneath. 

“Is this  _ your _ house?” he asks. 

“Yes,” she says, though  _ she _ is gradually making way for  _ he  _ (Bruce assumes, though he probably shouldn’t; he, of all people, should know better). “You don’t know whose party you’re at?”

“I just got invited by Tony Stark,” Bruce admits. The queen laughs heartily again, half of her face shedding away. 

“I’m Thor Odinson,” he says. “Son of – well, Odin. This is our house. And currently I’m washing the Queen of Ass-gard down the drain.”

Bruce hates himself for laughing at the name, but he does anyway, unable to help himself. Thor grins back at him, a radiant beam of sunlight. Bruce is weak. Bruce always falls in love too fast and too hard. But he can’t help it. 

“Would you like to dance with me?” Thor asks. Bruce hates dancing. He never dances. Just the thought of being a spectacle makes him feel nauseous. He nods dumbly. “Give me a minute, then. This makeup is on the stubborn side. It’s made to last.” 

“You’re not wearing it all night?” Bruce asks. 

“No,” Thor says. “When I wear it, I’m performing. When I’m not, I can be myself again. And it’s very heavy and not the most comfortable. But I  _ will  _ keep wearing this dress. It’s magnificent, don’t you think?” 

“I feel underdressed.” 

“Undo another button.” 

“You’re the second person to tell me that today.” 

“It’s because your chest hair is divine and that peek is a practically Victorian tease.” 

Bruce caves and undoes the button. When Thor turns around, still wearing that dress but now sans his stilettos, Bruce loses the faculties of speech. His mind fumbles in its recesses for high school poetry –  _ beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear _ – and finds nothing that can breach the barrier of his tongue. There are so many rational parts of his brain telling him he’s stupid, and all of them are drowning in the stormy seas of his emotions. Thor looks at him expectantly. 

“Shall we?” he asks. 

“Uh,” Bruce says, and tries to return his mind to his body. “Yeah. Yeah.” 

“I’m really not worth losing the power of speech for,” Thor says, looking particularly amused. “May I take your hand?”

“Yeah, but it’s really sweaty, I’m sorry.” Bruce pauses. “And – I mean, in that dress – you’re so pretty I just don’t know what to say.” He covers his face. “I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassing.” 

“Not at all,” Thor assures him, taking Bruce’s hand and squeezing his palm even though it’s shimmering with a layer of anxious sweat. “There’s a buffet table in another room and it’s a lot quieter. Do you want to go there instead?”

“Yes please,” Bruce says. “Also, I just – I want you to know I have seven PhDs. I swear I’m not always like this.” 

“ _ Seven _ ?” Thor begins to lead him out of the bathroom and through the house; and, knowing the layout well, Thor walks with the kind of confidence that makes Bruce begin to ease up, too. The crowds feel less like terrifying disembodied masses and more like people, smiling and dancing and drinking and talking. “Would you be offended if I accused you of hiding a portrait in your attic?”

“No,” Bruce says. “I like that reference.” 

“Thank you. I made it especially for your esteemed self.” 

“They were all in science, if it helps. I’m not very cultural.” 

“And I’m still incredibly impressed. Oh! Look at the mini-cupcakes! They’re so adorably tiny!” 

Thor bounds over to a part of the domineeringly intimidating banquet table (Bruce could hardly describe this spectacle as a simple  _ buffet _ , the word for finger foods and dried-out sandwiches no-one likes) and shows Bruce a dinky cupcake. Bruce feels dizzy stepping into this other life of opulence and luxury. He’s never been hard-by, but his middle class suburban upbringing and the string of minimum wage jobs that paid for his college accommodation seem miles away from the decadence of every room of Odin’s mansion. 

Thor sees that Bruce is overwhelmed, and helps him put together a plate of food before guiding him by the elbow outside and onto the clean-cut grass of the front porch. Bruce eats more peacefully out in the open, the breeze washing over his skin. Thor folds up his skirts to sit. 

Bruce blushes when he realises that Thor has actually been casting him sidelong glances, admiring his chest and the lines of his jaw and eyelashes. Bruce is too old for this. Bruce is young enough for this. Is he old, or is tiredness mistaken for age? He’s always been too old for his own good. It puffed his chest up with pride as a child – a  _ mature _ little boy – and now he feels like he never had a moment to be young. He doesn’t buy and collect stuffed figurines and eat ice cream for breakfast and connect with his inner child. Instead, he leans across the night and kisses Thor Odinson’s stained lips. 

Thor, predictably, tastes like cupcake icing. 

“You kiss like you’ve only ever read about it,” Thor says with an amicable laugh.

“It’s hard not to feel self-conscious kissing you. I mean, look at you.” 

“Look at  _ you _ !” Thor puts a hand on Bruce’s cheek, his fingers rough and dry and his nails painted a strong red. “Your eyes. Your nose. Those fantastic eyebrows. That  _ hair _ !” 

The music playing from within the house emanates out of open windows and doors, and the chords of  _ Rocket Man  _ catch the breeze and Bruce’s ears as Thor kisses him this time and Bruce lets himself sink in. It’s hard to describe the way he feels. Thor is beyond rationality; beyond the scientific rigour of his seven doctorates. Seeing Thor invites the same kind of majesty as seeing lightning fork across the sky and crash into the earth. 

Behind them, someone clears their throat. Bruce starts backward; Thor barely flinches except to catch him and steady him upright again. It’s one of the servers, but dressed in a different colour of suit and with gold on his lapels. 

“Odin wants to see you,” the server says. Thor sighs. 

“Must it be now? I’m a little busy, Heimdall.” 

“I can see that,” the server retorts in the same dry tone. “He insisted. You and your sibling.”

“Is it important or is it just an excuse to make them feel like shit?” 

A ghost of a smile passes Heimdall’s face. “It might be both,” he says diplomatically. “I believe it’s about your case. If you’re quick, you might have time to swap numbers first.” He produces a small notepad from his pocket, followed by a pen; Bruce writes down his landline, and then his number at the police department, and since Thor has no pockets, Heimdall holds onto them for safekeeping. Thor writes down one neat number and Bruce tucks it safely into his trouser pocket. He doesn’t want Thor to go, but knows he can’t say it. 

Thor kisses his forehead, and disappears into the building. Bruce knots his fingers. 

“You said case,” he says to Heimdall. “What kind of case?”

“I believe you know the case,” Heimdall says. “The murder case last night. Thor is working on it, including trying to communicate with your precinct on it. His father doesn’t quite agree with Thor’s proposals for open communication and working together on the case.” He turns, gesturing for Bruce to follow him back into the house. “I would be careful. Some of the guests are loyalists and won’t appreciate you being here.” 

“Yeah, well, I don’t appreciate them much either.” 

Bruce looks for Sam amongst the crowd; but he’s found by Joe instead, wearing a flamboyant Hawaiian shirt with all the buttons open and clearly high. “Oh my God,” Joe says. “Has anyone ever told you you look exactly like me?” 

“Do I?” Bruce asks. 

Joe laughs. “Fuck you.” 

“There’s lipstick on your mouth.”

“There’s lipstick on  _ yours _ . You look just like me.” 

“I’m going home. Have you seen Sam?” 

“Yeah, yeah, he’s just there. Who’d you kiss?” 

“Thor. He’s like– do you know the song  _ Strawberry Blond _ ?”

“Fuck. Like that, huh?” 

“Yeah.”

“You got it bad. You need a vodka.”

“I need to go home.” 

Joe flags Sam and Bucky; both of them seem tired already, and once Bucky downs the rest of his wine, they head outside to call a cab, only to find one already parked next to the grossly grandiose fountain that introduces visitors to the mansion. Bruce glances behind him and catches a glimpse of Heimdall; he waves, able to do little else. 

“Should we get Tony?” he asks. 

“Tony goes home when the party’s over,” Sam says. “He’ll be fine. We can go. Some of the 1610 were eyeing up a fight.” 

“Joe’s going to end up in one,” Bucky says.

“Joe could get a room full of pacifists to start a war,” Bruce says. “I’m not getting involved.” He takes one last look back at the mansion – its obscene glory, the glinting light of the chandelier, the gardens stretching out into the distance – and gets into the cab. His stomach feels turbulent, alive with nerves, his whole chest turning itself over and over with the feeling that he should be doing  _ something _ . Something. Anything. 

_ Something.  _

_ Something.  _

_ Something.  _

Bruce feels like he’s both overly aware of and floating above his body; he watches himself yell for the driver to let him out and watches himself stumble out onto the road, flanked on both sides by perfectly grown trees. He sees the conflict on his face and feels that same longing in his stomach that makes his heart and his lungs feel tight. He can’t go. He can’t go home like nothing has happened and lie in bed and think of nothing but Thor for hours. Even knowing that Thor is 1610 – his only love sprung from his only hate – doesn’t matter; he feels the distinction of geography fall away. It doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered. He hates the people who shot Natasha like he hates the faceless serial killer chasing people like prey. What does it matter where they come from? 

He realises how long he spent mulling things over in the car, aching and angsting and trying to negotiate between his feelings and the rationality that doesn’t understand them, as he walks. It’s not a short walk. The night lets him ache further with every step. He thinks about the moment that Thor turned to him from the sink, makeup gone, his hair in two perfect braids, his face lit up with his smile like the sun breaking through rain clouds. 

Bruce starts to run. Cars drive past him on their way out. 

He can no longer run when he finally reaches the dirt path to the mansion, his legs tired and on the verge of giving out. He stumbles with the euphoria of the sight of that fucking mansion, its lights beginning to blink out, and realises as he gets closer that someone is sitting on the edge of the fountain. 

Thor; waiting for him; grinning; the sun. 


	3. strawberry blond

_ i love everybody because i love you  _

_ all i need, darling, is a life in your shape _

_ i picture it soft and ache _

Red blooms across Natasha’s chest. 

She can’t pay the hospital bills. Bruce doesn’t date her anymore but falls asleep in the plastic chair at the hospital when he visits. He brings homemade soup, and more often candy bars from the vending machines that Natasha specifically asks for. “Who shot you?” he asks, and she doesn’t answer. She tries to read a Tolstoy and cracks, so Bruce brings her a series of short books about an assassin called Villanelle. 

She moves in with him in his furniture-less apartment. It always looks as if he’s either just moved in or is ready to move out. She brings blankets to drape over the sofa she spends most of the day in, watching Netflix or one of Bruce’s DVDs. There’s no discernible taste to his collection. She thinks some of them might be Joe’s. She does yoga on the floor’s wood veneer and reads case files Bruce brings her. She doesn’t let him help as much as he wants to. She won’t admit that kind of vulnerability. 

“Who shot you?” he asks. 

“Don’t,” she says. 

When she leaves, she says, “Vision.” 

Bucky tries to shoot Vision the week after. He fails. A bullet skims Sam’s side pulling Bucky away and out of the action. Natasha doesn’t believe in bad people – she doesn’t believe that Vision was bad for shooting her in a scuffle where she happened to get in the way of Clint Barton. She doesn’t believe Clint is bad for starting the fight; or that Bucky is bad for continuing it. What she does know is that even Bruce would kick Vision’s teeth in, and Bruce has never used his service revolver. 

  
  


Thor knows how best to sneak into his own house. He’s been doing it for years. A fight broke just before he left – Hela arguing that Tony Stark had allowed Joe Fixit in to corrupt the Odin household, trailer trash expletive-spitting shock-merchant weasel-faced bastard that he is – and so the coast is clear. Heimdall sees, but Heimdall hasn’t been fond of Odin lately; Thor doubts he’ll say anything, especially with the risk of it aggravating the fight further. Someone will end up with lead between their teeth, and Heimdall likely doesn’t want to find out when he’s cleaning their brains from the carpet. 

It was strange to learn that Bruce had an identical twin like that; but Thor looked at Joe, at his open shirt and shark smile, and couldn’t mistake him for Bruce. 

“We’re not identical,” Bruce says. Thor has a private garden beneath his room, with a pool; Bruce dips his toes into the water as Thor floats on his back, now wearing only his underwear. Bruce said he didn’t want to get in the water. “We’re fraternal.” 

“Wow. You look so similar.”

“It’s weird,” Bruce says, his chuckle breathy. He goes quiet again, the energy buzzing around him, palpably anxious. Thor touches his feet to the floor and wades over. “I’m – I’m trans, so we definitely didn’t look that alike for a long time. Now we look like a person who got cut in half and each regrew.” 

Bruce says it so gently that it takes Thor a moment to realise he’s been told something meaningful. He pushes himself out of the water. “Is that why you won’t come in?” 

“Actually, I just don’t like the feeling of wet clothes.” 

Thor presses a kiss to Bruce’s jaw, and rather likes the sensation, so drops his head and kisses the side of his neck. “You could wear none.”

“Stop it,” Bruce laughs. “It’s been, like – two hours, I’m not getting naked in front of you. And it’s not worth the reveal.” 

Thor is pretty sure it would be, but he isn’t going to force the issue, especially since Bruce came back for him, sweat sticking his curls to his forehead and his chest heaving, eyes big and full of longing. To be yearned for like that – it makes Thor’s heart jump. He presses another kiss to Bruce’s cheek, and when he tells Bruce that he’s beautiful and he’s sure Bruce is perfect, Bruce turns his face and kisses Thor so hard he almost slips back into the water. He laughs against Bruce’s mouth. 

“You know you owe me a dance,” he says. 

“No,” Bruce says. “I can’t dance. I hate it.”

“No-one’s watching.”

“ _ You’re  _ watching.” 

“And? I’m not judging.”

“Everybody judges.” 

“I’ll close my eyes.” 

“I don’t want to say I don’t trust you, but–”

Thor laughs. “No,” he says. “I know what you mean. Blindfold me.” 

“This is a health and safety risk on so many levels.”

“Come up to my bedroom. There are no pools or pillars to fall into there.  _ And  _ I have a record player.” Thor puts a hand over Bruce’s and can feel a layer of sweat building up. He relents a little. He wants to push Bruce into having some  _ fun  _ – but he doesn’t want to push him into being uncomfortable. Thor feels an instinct to protect Bruce, as if he ought to stand in front of him and keep him out of danger. Except Bruce knows how to use a gun, making Thor somewhat redundant. Even still. “You can just come up and listen to some, if that’s better.” 

Always that anxiety like a hummingbird beneath his skin. Does Bruce ever sleep? 

He follows Thor up the stone spiral stairs to his bedroom. Thor has never been self-conscious of it before, but wonders suddenly what it must look like to Bruce: his posters, his records, his books, his bedspread, the stuffed toy on his pillow. He can see Bruce’s eyes scanning the room, and watches with delight as a smile plays at the edges of Bruce’s mouth, the way he steps towards the bookcase and picks up Thor’s weather-beaten  _ Dune _ as if it’s his own and skims through his pages. “One of my favourites,” Bruce says. This copy of  _ Dune _ followed Thor from Norway to here; it tossed and turned in his hand luggage, another crack forming in its sellotaped spine as he read its familiar words. It was one of the first books he ever read in English in his own time, for his own enjoyment, puzzling over the fantastical terms and unsure where to distinguish real from fiction. Bruce puts it back carefully, and skims his finger over Thor’s other books. More science fiction. An out-of-order collection of beloved Pratchett mass market paperbacks.  _ Emma _ . Iain Banks. Iain  _ M.  _ Banks. Octavia Butler. Neil Gaiman. An  _ Anansi Boys  _ read more than  _ American Gods _ , because Thor has always liked it better. He has a few stray library books at the bottom of his shelves – he tends to read whatever catches his eye from the library, finding books he never would’ve. He also likes reading the extended  _ Star Wars _ and  _ Star Trek _ novels from the library. (He’s always preferred  _ Wars _ ; Bruce gives him  _ Trek _ vibes. Bruce is the kind of person he could see on a Starfleet vessel.) Bruce seems to settle into the room like a piece of old furniture – or a beloved book, maybe. 

“I’m always scared of keeping things,” Bruce says. “I don’t have a lot of furniture. I’m convinced something will chase me out and I’ll have to move. I don’t know what; my dad is dead. My house looks like I’m ready to leave.” He pauses, running a fingertip across Thor’s DVDs, then dislodging a layer of dust atop one of his figurines. His voice cracks when he speaks again. “This is what I want. Somewhere that feels like a home. Where I could live.”

Thor wants to bundle Bruce in his arms and hold him close. Instead, he takes a step closer and strokes Bruce’s hair. “You can have that,” he says. “You’re allowed that.” 

“I feel like I’ve been trying to pay off the sins of my dad all my life,” Bruce says. “Like I’ve always been in his shadow. I want to step out.”

“Then step out,” Thor says. “I’ve got you.” 

Bruce puts his head on Thor’s shoulder. He’s incredibly warm. Thor puts an arm around him and lets his hand settle steady at the small of Bruce’s back. He could stay like this for hours.

He could. But they don’t. 

He lets Bruce pick a record. “I don’t listen to a lot of music,” Bruce admits as he sifts through Thor’s collection. 

“Pick whatever catches your eye,” Thor suggests. “What  _ do _ you listen to?”

“Uh, opera.”

Definitely not the answer Thor was expecting. He’s been forced along to an opera once or twice in his lifetime, but remembers finding them mind-numbingly boring. The music – well, he can’t imagine listening to it on his days off. “That’s unusual,” he says, as a rather polite summary of his thoughts. Bruce chuckles. 

“Yeah, it’s an acquired taste,” he says. “And not really one I  _ wanted _ to acquire.” 

He picks a record, and Thor watches as he sets it in place and lets the needle scratch over the grooves. He didn’t see what Bruce chose, and waits for the first few bars to swell out from his speakers. He recognises it immediately:  _ Death _ by White Lies, the kind of song that feels like falling in love and falling through the air. Bruce picking this is like synchronicity. He stands at the record player, listening, still even as the beat reverberates through the floor. 

Thor is torn between wanting to move and wanting to mirror Bruce’s patient stillness. 

He takes a step forward; then another, and another, until he’s standing so close to Bruce that he can see the prickle of the hair on the back of his neck with goosebumps. Bruce turns, so slowly that Thor is convinced all of time has conspired to drag at a glacial pace, to draw out every second to a standstill. Thor wants to kiss him. Thor wants to kiss him so hard they melt into each other and the boundaries between them blur. Thor wants to kiss him until the sun explodes. But he waits. 

Bruce touches his face, smooths his fingers through Thor’s long hair, every touch electric. His hands are soft. Thor waits. He thinks Bruce might kiss him. Bruce is looking at his lips, and then he tilts Thor’s head back, and lays his head there as the music comes to a crescendo. This is a record for flying too close to the sun. He can feel the unsteady rhythms of Bruce’s breathing; and can feel them slowly even out. 

And Thor realises, with a feeling that blossoms warm in his chest, that Bruce has fallen asleep against him. He carries Bruce carefully to his bed and lays him there, turning down the speakers. 

  
  


Bruce sleeps for an hour, and when he wakes up, he yawns and stretches and looks at Thor, who’s settled on a beanbag reading. He could live like this. He could wake up like this every day. What is the life he’s made for himself, with scant thrifted furniture and cases he’ll never solve and the sound of the subway passing by when he can’t sleep? What is that compared to  _ this _ ? 

“Marry me,” he says, and means this very seriously. 

Thor says nothing for a moment, and Bruce thinks he’s ruined everything. Then he grins. 

“Okay,” he says. “When?”

“Tomorrow.” 

“Do you know an officiant?”

“I do. I can sort it out and phone you.” 

Thor laughs. “I’d call you crazy if clearly I wasn’t equally so.” He gets up from the floor and settles into bed beside Bruce, who feels a woozy flutter as the mattress dips and Thor’s body moulds into place next to his. “We could move somewhere, and every room could look like a home. A nice area, wherever you’d like.”

“I’ve always wanted a rabbit,” Bruce says absent-mindedly.

“Then we can have a rabbit,” Thor says with a breathy chuckle. “Or two. Personally, I would love a cockatiel. We could have a menagerie.”

“I’d have to bring my fish.”

Bruce sits up, glancing out of the window at the black cloud of night. The stars are twinkling, the view perfect from here. He wonders how close they are to the sunrise and his next shift, feeling time slipping through his fingers like it has been for years. He gets up, stepping over Thor. “I’m going into the pool,” he says bravely, and then checks Thor’s face for a reaction. Thor just smiles, and disappears to grab some towels. 

Bruce leaves his clothes in a neatly folded pile on the ground, just out of splashing distance. He undresses slowly, and slower still when he catches a glimpse of Thor watching through the window. A nervous striptease. Bruce’s life is certainly going places. 

He sinks into the water. 

He can hear a record by The Temptations playing in the distance. He smiles.  _ There’s _ some music he knows. 

Thor arrives with a predictable splash, and almost bowls Bruce backwards into the water with the fierceness of his kiss. When they part, Bruce wipes some pink out of Thor’s beard and tucks some stray escaped hair behind his ear, almost instinctively. “It was worth the reveal,” Thor says reverently, looking at Bruce like he’s the first ever sunrise, a God made flesh. Bruce thinks the most impressive part about him is his surgical scars. “You’re beautiful.” 

“You don’t have to lie to me just because we’re getting married tomorrow,” Bruce says, somewhere between joke and reality. Thor looks at him like he’s gone crazy, but evidently the two of them have been beyond sanity for several hours now. 

“Why do you think I’m lying? I mean what I say. You’re quite stunning. Whoever told you that you weren’t?” 

Bruce would say  _ nobody  _ and then  _ me _ if he had a voice, but what he means is  _ nobody has ever told me I’m pretty before, and I just assumed that, being considered some Frankenstein creation by society, I was too hideous to look at _ . Thor is saying “ _ look at you _ ” all over again like a prayer. 

Bruce puts an arm around him and baptises them both there in the stagnant water of Thor’s garden pool, washing everything away. The sins, the mistakes, the blood on his hands; and everything cruel he ever thought about himself, because he may, in fact, have been wrong all along. 

  
  


“He is such a fuck-ass,” Joe says, and spits blood and a tooth into the sink.  _ You can swallow about a pint of blood before you’re sick. _ Nothing like a pint today. T’Challa, patience of a saint even when he’s throwing a punch. T’Challa’s hatred of the 616 boils in his blood; he believes they botched the handling of the bombing that killed his father, and he’s right – in a sense. Bucky, who had been living in Russia since college and only recently moved back, had suffered a nervous breakdown, and the reshuffling of officers on the case led to inexperienced handling and insufficient levels of investigation. Joe doesn’t begrudge his anger. Joe doesn’t begrudge  _ any _ anger. He spends a lot of time angry. Where would he be without it?

Joe said something particularly lewd about Loki, and of all people, T’Challa had clocked him in the jaw. But T’Challa is about  _ respect _ , and Loki told Joe on the ride back to their apartment that T’Challa was their partner on the case, so it made sense, eventually. And, of course, he was expelled from the house by Odin, before anybody could hurt him even more. 

Loki had snuck out moments later, apparently rather enamoured by Joe’s wickedly inflammatory responses, and kissed his bloody mouth. Joe might need stitches. 

They’re standing just outside the bathroom door, waiting for him to rinse his mouth out. Joe rinses it with salt water. 

“Who?” Loki asks. 

“Odin,” Joe says. “Hela is clearly just acting as a mouthpiece for his unspoken radical views. Seen it before. And like, it’s the whole undervaluing you and overvaluing Thor, who – bless his pretty puppy dog heart – isn’t worth more than you, only to pretend he values you when he’s policing your relationships. Fuck that! And the whole police shit, too? The fucking chokehold he has on your department to avoid giving us crucial information on an ongoing serial killer– fucking selfish. Asshole. Him being police chief makes me wonder what the fuck I do this job for.” 

“There is no justice, so definitely the money. Or do you like being able to legally tackle people?” 

“Torturing people in custody definitely gets me going,” Joe says, and wonders what it says about the world that he’s not sure how much of that is a joke.  He checks his face in the mirror – devilishly handsome, check; black eye, check; crooked nose, check – and turns. 

“One thing first,” Loki says. “Your brother is never going to be faxed our case file. I made a copy. We have a suspect.”

“You’ve got a suspect? We were at loose ends after we cleared the car’s owner.” 

“When Thor visited her, her father was visiting the flat. He’s  _ very _ tall – seven foot by best wagers – and looks like descriptions we’ve gathered of the suspect, and he would be able to steal the keys easily from her. We’re investigating him right now, so I won’t pass his name on, but I’ll keep you updated if it works out.” 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Joe breathes. “I hope it is. I want that fucker away. Creepy motherfucker. And you…” He purrs, shutting the bathroom door behind him as he presses himself into Loki. “Look at you fucking go, huh? Got a suspect in one. Maybe there’s something about that 1610.” He leans into Loki’s ear and nips it. “Maybe there’s something about  _ you _ .”

“Darling,” Loki says, voice as beautifully dry and clipped as ever, “stop trying to flatter me, and take your clothes off.” 

Joe doesn’t waste any more time. He notices after that he left a bloody stain on Loki’s neck.  He rolls out of bed and returns with a cloth, wiping it away and leaving pristine skin underneath; Loki watches him lazily. Joe’s sure they would love it if he just pampered them all day. He might. Tomorrow is close. Breakfast in bed; the delicious feeling of Loki’s fingers inside of him; some perfect lunch, ready just in time for Loki to step out of the shower; take-out dinner; evening television; the kind of sex that all the neighbours can hear, over and over, a tangle of limbs and ecstasy. This hits Joe like a freight train. He looks down at Loki, and catches their mouth in his so tenderly he betrays all of those stupid thoughts. 

Bruce’s voice in his head says  _ oh, you’ve got it bad _ . 

Loki moans. 

“I want you,” Joe says breathlessly. 

“Then fucking have me,” they say. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the scene where they listen to white lies is basically a recreation of the scene from "a girl walks home alone at night", which is one of my favourite films ever and which i had to pay homage to


	4. your best american boy

_ you’re the one _

_you’ve all i_ _ever wanted_

_ i think i’ll regret this  _

Joe watches the smoke rise into the air as he waits in the cool morning. He didn’t sleep, and came straight from Loki’s apartment to here; he drank a coffee or two or three on the way, and now listens to the hive buzzing in his head. The door bangs behind him, and Bruce bustles out onto the street, swinging onto his bike. The sheer psychopathy of his decision to cycle to work impresses Joe every day. 

“Hey,” Joe says. “Got’cha the case report from the 1610. Preliminary. They’re still lookin’ into it, but I figured you’d still want it.”

“Do I even want to ask where you got that?” Bruce asks, accepting the report and tucking it neatly into his backpack. He looks a mirror of Joe’s exhaustion – minus, of course, the black eye and split lip. “Have you been to the hospital?”

“Not worth the bill,” Joe says. 

“Your nose is broken,” Bruce counters. 

“Been broken before,” Joe shrugs. 

“Fine. It doesn’t matter. Thanks, and just – go to  _ sleep _ , would you? One of us has to.”

Joe would ask  _ why me _ , but he can already visualise Bruce’s response, so he laughs instead and says “fuckin’ fine,” and watches Bruce disappear into the distance. 

  
  


“Wait, wait, waitwaitwaitwaitwait.” Scott stares into the microwave as it spins hypnotically, the timer counting steadily yet somehow slowly down to nothing. He stares at the microwave, and then at Bruce, and then back; and puts his hands on his hips, and straightens up, and points, and then puts his hand down again. “Who can you even be getting married to? Have you been keeping, like, a secret partner? I don’t wanna officiate any risky decisions, you know. Divorce is expensive.” 

“I’m serious about it,” Bruce says. “I promise, Scott, I wouldn’t get you involved otherwise.” 

The microwave dings. Scott produces his plate of leftover pasta from last night’s family dinner – he can  _ never _ figure out the right amount to make, and would rather make too much than too little – and digs in right away. He saw Bruce eat a panini at his desk earlier, spilling crumbs as he answered the phone. “Okay, but you gotta tell me who it is.”

Bruce seems to flinch when he says “Thor Odinson,” and not surprisingly, because it takes all of Scott’s half-assed self-restraint to not start yelling. Thor is a detective in the 1610, and Scott heard from Luis earlier that there was a  _ sick ass-party last night bro  _ and  _ yeah that skinny guy with the creepy moustache got his freakin’ TEETH punched in by Hela who is a very foxy lady but so scary once my cousin saw her–  _ He can’t believe Bruce wants to marry one of their detectives when just the night before, said detective’s sister knocked Bruce’s brothers teeth out. (Scott is confused.) 

“No,” says Scott. “No, no. People are just going to get hurt.” 

“Scott,” Bruce says, wringing his hands. “Please.” His voice softens. “I love him.”

“Oh, come on. You know I can’t say no to true love. That’s mean.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re the only person I know who can actually officiate. Unless we went to Vegas.” 

“You’re too classy for Vegas,” Scott concurs. “Especially since it’s your first wedding. But today? Are you sure? I’m not going to have time to get a suit or anything.” 

“It’s fine. It’s casual. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, or have some big ceremony where I spend a lot of money and feel obliged to invite family members I don’t like. I just want to marry him.” 

“Okay, that’s kinda cute. But you’re sure you can handle the whole – us hating each other thing? I mean, what happened to Nat…” 

“He thinks what happened to Nat was awful and he wants to end the rivalry. It’s Odin who keeps perpetuating it. I know it wouldn’t be  _ gone _ overnight, but…” Bruce sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “We could at least cooperate.”

Scott nods. He hasn’t been working on the suspected serial killer case that Bruce heads up, but he heard about the murder on the news last night and knew enough to put two and two together. With no cooperation, they might not catch him; or if they do, there might be difficulties with prosecuting him. He understands Bruce’s frustration as much as he understands the simmering anger between the two departments. 

And because Scott has been married once, and hopefully soon that’ll be twice, he understands love and just how stupid and blind it is. 

He’s also seen Thor, and Thor is like the moment the sun breaks through the dark clouds on a rainy day, and that’s irresistible. 

  
  


“Oh, for the love of God.”

Tony is the source of the noise complaint. Really, Sam came all the way out here, wasting his and Bucky’s  _ precious _ time for Tony to be the asshole blasting his boombox on the promenade. Both residents  _ and _ businesses have complained enough that Sam and Bucky were rerouted from their investigations, and here it is: fucking  _ Tony _ . 

“How is that not giving him a headache?” Bucky grumbles. “I feel like shit and I think I drank, like, a quarter of what he had before we left.” 

“I’m sure we’d all feel sunny if we were white tech billionaires,” Sam says.  “Some Elon Musk Bond villain shit.” He clears his throat loudly as they approach. Tony is sitting at a round table shaded under a parasol, sipping some presumably alcoholic concoction (complete with tiny paper umbrella) through a curly straw as he blasts AC/DC to the entire neighbourhood. “Hey, man! Don’t you have employees to terrorise?”

“We’re moving offices right now,” Tony says, and loudly slurps his drink. “It’s boring. I’m bored. Happy gets to yell at people on the phone all day. Besides that, sit down, because I have the  _ gossip _ from last night which you old ladies missed.”

“I’m surprised you  _ remember _ anything from last night,” Bucky says, taking a seat. Sam cuts the music, but now that Tony has gotten what he wanted (attention; honestly, isn’t someone hired for this?), he doesn’t even seem to notice. He snaps his fingers at the guy running the drinks stand – Bucky quickly clarifies they will be having  _ virgin _ drinks because they’re on  _ active duty _ – and leans forward, the air seeming to crackle around him with the electricity of his excitement. 

“I’m a veteran drinker,  _ and _ gossiper. I remember  _ everything _ . So anyway, after you two left – actually, a lot happened. Odin’s daughter Hela accused Joe Fixit of defiling her brother – misgendering not mine – and ruining his status and trying to bring down the ‘prestige of the house of Odin’ and of the 1610. Since he basically funds it, you know, and runs the whole thing – I mean, Rhodey hates it, but he can’t do anything. So people start gathering around that fight, and Joe starts yelling about how he loves defiling Loki and goes right into the gory details. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Anyway, T’Challa clocks him  _ right _ in the face and he vanishes off in the night with Loki. So that’s new. And when I step outside to get some fresh air and to avoid getting my  _ own _ nose broken,  _ who _ do I see but Bruce Banner running up like a love interest in an airport to  _ Thor Odinson _ . I didn’t see him leave, either. And I doubt Loki and Joe are going to be inseparable sweethearts, but those two are  _ definitely _ getting some mileage.” 

“So what’s the actual gossip?  _ Department 616 prepares for Detective Banner’s eventual gunshot between the eyes? _ ” Sam feels bad the moment he says it, and Bucky side-eyes him. But there’s an inevitability to the violence this kind of love will enact. 

“No, you sicko. Bruce has got a  _ forbidden boyfriend _ !”

“Natasha’ll be glad to hear that,” Bucky says, chuckling into the drink he’s just been served. It’s very sweet and fruity. “Do you think he was overcompensating for something with her?”

“No,” Tony says. “He used to have a steady college girlfriend. And then on the side he would have sex with me. Good times. They’re just – what do you call it, not on the same wavelength?” He takes a surprisingly thoughtful sip. “He’s autistic. Don’t attribute to anything else what can be explained by Ford wiring his brain differently.” 

“She’s intimidating for anybody,” Sam concurs. “Oh, hey. Is that him? Or is it Joe? Moustache? Anybody see the moustache?”

“ _ The  _ worst moustache,” Tony says. “But at least it makes it easy to tell them apart. That, and the accent. How do they even have two different accents?” 

“That’s definitely Bruce. He likes the coffee here,” Bucky says. He leans over and switches the boombox back on, almost deafening himself in the process; but it gets the job done, and Bruce arrives a moment later to switch it off again, coffee in hand. It’s a large coffee. Bucky exchanges a look with Sam. Bruce scuffs a hand through his hair.

“Well, well, well,” Tony says, putting his feet on the table. Sam leans over and shoves them off, almost spilling Tony’s drink in the process. Instead, there’s just a neon pink slosh. “Hi, party boy.”

“Where the hell did you go last night?” Bucky asks, not entirely sure where he’s going with that kind of pressing. He already  _ knows  _ what he’s pushing for. But he wants Bruce to say it, so that they don’t have to be a team with secrets: Bruce has seen Bucky at every moment of his life, has picked him up in crisis at three am from the supermarket with a box of Lucky Charms, has let Bucky stay with him. This shouldn’t be the kind of secret that proves an exception. “I can’t believe you jumped out of the taxi.”

“Uh, yeah, I – forgot something at the house.” Bruce clears his throat. Sam sighs. Bruce is falling at the first hurdle, so he opts simply to kick the rest over and disqualify the race. 

“We heard you were seen with Thor,” he says, sipping his drink and then offering it to Bruce, who declines in favour of his coffee. 

“Nothing against it,” Tony says. “He was looking pretty godly in that dress last night.”

Bruce sighs, and sits down in the last free chair. “Yeah,” he says. “I stayed over most of the night -  _ not like that _ , Tony - and now we’re going out.” 

“That was the most un-illuminating statement I’ve ever heard,” Bucky says, sounding as decidedly unimpressed as he looks. “You jumped out of that car like you were in a movie and  _ that’s _ all you give us? I’m not Tony, I don’t want the juicy details, but  _ come on _ .” 

Bruce laughs, somewhat uncomfortably, into his coffee. Bucky begins to feel the urge to sink into the sand. Sam wonders why the fuck they stopped to talk to Tony in the first place. “I’m not saving you the details, honestly,” he says. “We kissed, I accidentally fell asleep for a few hours, we talked for a while, and then I went home and got ready for work. He’s so nice that it’s almost unfair. It’s like he’s hoarding all the best parts of humanity from everybody else. He’s so nice it feels like I’m waiting for the penny to drop.” 

“That’s so gay I regret asking,” Sam says. “But good for you, man.”

“He was in full drag last night, what did you expect?” Tony asks. “Is he a good kisser?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“Is he, though?”

“Better than you.” 

Bucky chokes on his drink, and then promptly makes up an excuse to go. As he does, he catches sight of someone approaching them who looks vaguely familiar. He’s wearing a neatly tailored suit but with quarter-length sleeves, and his dreadlocks are tied in a bun on top of his head. Tattoos snake out from his buttoned top collar: an eye stares out and back at Bucky. But his two blinking eyes ignore Bucky entirely. 

“Do you have word for Thor?” the man asks. It clicks for Bucky that he was the head waiter at the party last night – Heimdall. He told Bucky something about the wine that he doesn’t remember. 

“I was gonna call him when I got back to the station,” Bruce says. “But you can pass something on, I guess – uh, can we talk somewhere private?”

“Ooh,” Tony says, wolf-whistling. “Look at this secrecy. What’s happening? Are you going on a date or are you creating an elaborate schedule for when he’s finally gonna get to lay you? Are you family planning? If you have a girl, you could just change the  _ Tony  _ to  _ Antonia _ –”

“Your existence is a goddamn noise complaint, Tony, leave the man in peace. And don’t go assuming his kid’s genders; come on, man.” Sam gets up, following Bucky’s lead to return to some real policing. Bruce is heading off across the sand with Heimdall. Sam also eagerly wants to know what they’re talking about, but unfortunately, it’s none of his business. 

“When do we tell everyone we’re going out?” Bucky asks as they return to the busy afternoon streets. The smell of coffee and brownies wafts out of the shop Bruce was just in, and he’s torn between asking Sam if they can stop off there and letting it go. Sam seems to have his eye on it, too. “You wanna get a coffee?”

“Listen, if nobody has actually figured it out yet because they’re busy obsessing over Banner’s love life, then we should just leave it like that before Tony starts asking us how often they bone. And only if you’re paying.”

Bucky laughs breathlessly. “Fuck you,” he says. “You’re getting a kid’s size coffee.”

  
  


Thor finishes his shift, eats a quick dinner at a fast food joint, and starts his walk towards the church. It’s a staunch little building with little in the way of typical church decor except for a small stained glass window at the back. It’s terrible, art-wise, but it’s hard not to personally enjoy the egregious nose of Christ or his four fingers. Thor doesn’t actually know if it has a congregation, since the only things that seem to happen there are support group meetings and raves. He hears someone playing the organ every now and then when he passes it on the way to get his nails done. Currently they’re starting to chip, but nothing about Bruce signals that he would mind at all. 

When he arrives at the church, no one is there except him. He must be early. He sets his phone on one of the pews and fixes his hair, braiding it into some of the marital braids he remembers from his parents’ wedding pictures. His mother looked beautiful. He would love to be wearing a dress right now, but he’s sure he can have a party to celebrate the marriage at another time; right now, trying to bring together their families and friends might result in a death, and definitely a few lost teeth. Thor wishes it wasn’t like this – and so does his mother, but even she’s no match for Odin’s all-encompassing stubbornness. He wishes she could be here right now. 

But he  _ did _ tell her he was getting married, because he trusts her, and she smiled and stroked a hand through his hair and said she was glad to see him happy. 

The front door opens and Bruce steps inside, his hair ruffled with the wind and looking out of breath. Bruce doesn’t seem to have much of an opinion of himself, but Thor really thinks there’s something about him that takes his breath away every time. Bruce isn’t going to be a supermodel, but he doesn’t need to be. He just  _ is _ , and that’s what’s special. 

A moment later, another person steps across the threshold – Thor assumes that this is the officiant, and Bruce confirms this when he introduces their new arrival as his colleague Scott. “I’m the kind of idiot that got the right to legally marry people,” Scott says cheerily. “Might as well use it for some good, right? You guys ready? You want to stand up at the front like a real wedding?”

“It wouldn’t be a marriage if I didn’t get to walk up the aisle,” Thor says, reaching out for Bruce’s hand. Even in the low light of the church, he can see that Bruce is blushing a little. He winds their fingers together, and they walk with a fresh kind of dignity between the pews. Bruce tells him his hair looks beautiful. Thor replies that  _ Bruce _ is beautiful. 

Scott asks if either of them have any vows or anything written that they’d like to read. Thor does not. Much to his surprise, Bruce fishes around in his pocket and produces a folded-up piece of notebook paper. 

He starts to read. 

> You, Beloved, who are all
> 
> the gardens I have ever gazed at,
> 
> longing. An open window
> 
> in a country house —, and you almost
> 
> stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
> 
> Streets that I chanced upon,—
> 
> you had just walked down them and vanished.
> 
> And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
> 
> were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
> 
> gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
> 
> perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
> 
> yesterday, separate, in the evening…

Bruce looks up and laughs. “It’s probably about God,” he says. “Maybe that says something about you. I don’t know. I don’t really get poetry. Rilke was my mom’s favourite.” 

Thor, for once, is at a loss for words. 

When he looks over, Scott has tears in his eyes that he embarrassedly rubs away. “Sorry,” he says. “Wow. That was just really romantic. Honestly, this marriage is probably going to make all of our worlds explode, so I’m glad it’s you two lighting the fuse. Do people still do bombs like that or was it just in the movies?”

When they kiss, Thor can feel the tectonic plates shift. 

  
  


They go back to his. It’s bigger, after all.  He flicks through his records as Bruce rifles through the chest of drawers for lube. “I know I’m lucky enough to be self-lubricating, but just not enough anymore. It’s the testosterone,” he’d said on the way. “It’s great, but then you get male pattern baldness and feel like the Gobi desert.” 

“The pure bliss of masculinity,” Thor replied. “Though that’s – technically incorrect. I’m not entirely sure I’m a man. I’m not entirely sure I  _ care _ .”

And he’d never told anyone that before, and it weighed heavy on the air until Bruce said  _ okay _ and  _ tell me if you want me to use a new name or pronouns or try them out, or not, just – whatever you want to do I’m here for you _ . His words were warm. Thor still feels fuzzy. He picks out a Dan Deacon record, the kind that makes him feel like he’s transcending from the limits of Earth when he listens to it with his eyes shut.

Bruce finds the lube. He’s also found the rest of Thor’s collection of sex toys. “Can you actually – like, fit this?” he asks, gesturing to an obscenely large dildo. Thor laughs. 

“Do you want to see me try?”

Bruce goes bright red. There’s no visible evidence of his arousal like there is growing for Thor, but it’s palpable in the air. “Maybe – maybe later,” he says a little bashfully. Thor teases him by drawing out the moment, switching off the overhead light and leaving only various lamps and fairly lights on. He would light a candle if he didn’t fear burning the house down by accident, a fear he can definitely trace back to Loki whispering in his ear. 

But he steps away from the fear, and towards Bruce. His husband. His  _ husband _ ! What a word; what a glorious, joyful word, and they tumble onto the bed kissing furiously for the love of it. Bruce seems to get caught in every avenue of his clothes, the anxiety sparking through his aura, and once he’s finally naked Thor dedicates time to him to let the feeling pass. Bruce couldn’t fuck this up if he tried, no matter how hard he might worry. His lips find every inch of Bruce’s skin, and he trails slowly down to the thicket of pubic hair, untrimmed and curly and a microcosm of perfect chaos. He traces his fingers along Bruce’s arms, then inward towards his thighs. 

Thor could spend every minute of his life pleasuring Bruce, and it’d be a life well-spent. It’s a slow process, and Bruce makes no sound for most of it to indicate anything; it pays off only when he starts to get close and Thor can feel him begin to tense, and then through his silence come a few strangled breaths and little moans as his legs involuntarily try to close, overwhelmed with the sensation of pleasure. His face is red. Thor laughs with delight and kisses him. 

Bruce gets a little louder later, when Thor finds the spots that make him gasp. 

There’s an interlude for a nap, and then Bruce returns the favour. 

When they wake up again as the sun broaches afternoon, Thor orders take-out and they sit in the garden together. Bruce is wearing his shirt open, and it makes Thor smile. He says he called Joe at work yesterday to cover his shift today; which Thor is quick to calculate means that he’s working two or three consecutive shifts. 

“He doesn’t mind,” Bruce says. “He doesn’t get to go out and interview people very often since he works nights, so I’m sure he’s harassing my suspect list right about now.” 

“He’s very unlike you,” Thor says. 

“He likes to say he adapted to survive.” 

Thor says he started looking at houses.  _ In this area. To get a feel; nothing serious. But how would you feel about moving in? _

“I want a home with you, and I want it as soon as we can,” he says. “But I think I want to move away. I want to get away from the police, and the rivalry, and start a new job and a new life. I’m tired of murders. I’m tired of all the cases I can’t solve and all the people I can’t prosecute and all the families who thought they could trust me. And more than that, I’m tired of being complicit in the systemic violence and racism and transphobia. I’m tired of releasing the night shift’s round-up of queer sex workers on the nights Joe doesn’t work to do it himself. I want more.” 

Thor looks at him, and says nothing, because there is nothing at all to say. Bruce is right about everything. He so often is.

“In our new life,” Thor says eventually, once the food has come and they’re eating cross-legged on his bed like high schoolers while Bruce is wearing one of Thor’s T-shirts, “I think I’d like to use  _ they _ pronouns as well as  _ he _ pronouns.”

“Why wait?” Bruce asks. Thor smiles. 

  
  


Joe peddles the address out of Loki, and on his way back to the station from taking a witness statement, stops outside the house. It’s the upper tier of suburban, with a backyard and front porch and a garage and a dog asleep by the door. He spits on the ground. 


	5. real love

_ real love turns your lungs black _

_ real love is a heart attack _

The moment Loki realises that they love Joe Fixit, whether that’s platonic or romantic or an indeterminate mix of both that can never be untangled, is when he gets shot. 

  
  


Hela misses the first time – involuntarily, of course. She’s a perfect shot. She came to shoot Joe and pointed her gun directly at him. Tony gets in the way, and the bullet goes through him first. Then she shoots Joe. Blood splatters onto the sand. 

For a moment, no-one moves. 

“A plague on both your houses,” Joe mutters, and then laughs, spitting blood. “A plague on both your houses!” 

He raises his arm and, in a split-second, shoots Hela. This is when Loki discovers love hurts like a bullet wound. 

  
  


Joe disappears promptly thereafter. Sam stems Tony’s bleeding and Loki does something of the same for Hela, but without getting so much as a stain on their clothing. “ _ Him _ ,” she says disdainfully, spitting the consonants. “He  _ shot me _ . Is that your kind of man?”

“A man of spirit? Quite,” Loki responds. 

“I’m putting a warrant out for his arrest,” she says. “An  _ urgent _ one. Who can be safe when such a barbarian roams the streets?” 

Loki holds their tongue, if only because Hela still has her gun and there’s no love spared between them. Hela’s concern for Loki’s romantic affairs is purely limited to how they reflect back on the family.  What it does for the Odin  _ reputation _ . Loki loves their own reputation, too, of course – but they don’t see that their choice of who to sleep with tarnishes it at all. 

Joe’s crooked smile drives them crazy at the same time as they want it framed. 

_ A plague on both your houses _ . Loki thinks of the blood in Joe’s spit as he shouted, and wonders where those words came from. 

  
  


Joe makes it two steps into the door of Bruce’s house and collapses. “Oh, fuck,” Bucky says, looping an arm around him and half-carrying him through to the kitchen. The front of Joe’s shirt is saturated with blood. Bucky reaches for the phone. 

“No!” Joe shouts. “No. They’ll fuckin’ arrest me and I ain’t  _ done yet _ . Where the fuck is Bruce?”

“I don’t know, he hasn’t come home,” Bucky says, making a beeline for the bathroom. He knows that Bruce keeps a first aid kit somewhere. “I assumed he was with Thor.” 

“Ugh. Asshole. Ain’t we  _ twins _ ? Ain’t he supposed to feel it when I get shot or something?” Joe is no stranger to pain, but Hela is a good shot; he’s got half a mind that he might just bleed out in this chair or die of irreparable organ damage. And he doesn’t care if he dies. 

Just – not  _ yet _ . 

He has something to do.

Bucky patches him up first before he asks any more questions, and Joe sings his earworm. “ _ Jesus walk with me _ …” He’s familiar with the taste of blood and the feeling of complete and utter  _ rawness  _ that comes with a wound, even if a bullet wound is a whole new level of pain. He can tune it out. He’s been doing it a long time. 

Bucky makes him a cup of cocoa. “Fuck you,” says Joe. “I want coffee.”

“No,” says Bucky. “You can have marshmallows.” 

“Fine.” 

Joe eats all of the mini marshmallows that Bucky gives him. He doesn’t mind cocoa – and actually, when he sips it, it’s nice. Made with  _ milk _ , none of that watered-down shit. Like mom’s. He wonders again where Bruce is right now and what he’s doing. Probably something Disney-rated with Thor; Joe is the brother who picks up the slack. 

“Who shot you?” Bucky asks. 

“Hela,” Joe says. “She has an arrest warrant out for me. I shot her. Motherfucker. I shot her where it should’ve killed her and the bitch could still speak. She’s fuckin’ next level.” 

“Hold on. Which one of you shot first? And what happened? I know she has a reputation, but–”

“Don’t go giving her credit now. She shot me cause she doesn’t like that me and her sibling have a fun and fulfilling consensual sexual relationship.” Joe pops all the consonants, the  _ p _ like a bubblegum burst. Bucky seems to miss the content of what he was saying for a second, which tracks across his face.  Joe laughs. “She shot to kill, ’cept she doesn’t know I’m used to it. She’s gonna fuckin’ kill people.”

“I thought things have been getting better since Odin retired as captain,” Bucky says. 

“Bucky, baby, police departments ain’t supposed to shoot each other and refuse to cooperate at all,” he says. “And they have been getting better, but I’m gonna make this shit worse. Hela’s not gonna stop until I’m six feet under. Crack a window. I’m lighting up.”

“Bruce is gonna kill you,” Bucky says, opening the kitchen window and immediately being blasted with the sound of sirens passing by. Joe fetches his cigarettes from his pocket and lights one, placing it between his lips. 

“He got me to stop smoking for a while,” Joe muses. “Replaced them with toothpicks. I just rolled them around in my mouth to keep me busy. I started again to fuck him off.” He snorts, and lets out a stream of smoke. 

The front door opens in a hurry. 

“Speak of the devil,” Joe says. “Or should that be the angel?”

  
  


Joe tells Bruce everything that he needs to know, which is only about half of the story. He tells Bruce that he and Thor need to take advantage of the accidental shitstorm Joe has whipped up and leave before anybody from the house of Odin figures out they’re dating and tries to stick a bullet in Bruce, who isn’t quite as cunningly survivalistic. “This can only end badly,” Joe says, “and I can take that, but you can’t.” 

“What did you do to Hela?” Bruce asks. Joe raises his eyebrows. “She’s not trying to kill you just to maintain the family reputation. What did you do?”

Joe has done a lot of things in his life. He shrugs in joint smoke. “What didn’t I do?” he says, knowing exactly what he did. 

Joe, contrary to even his own beliefs, isn’t terribly stupid. He’s no Bruce, but he’s sharp enough to manage. Sharp enough to notice the glaring holes in the Odin finances – which led to noticing several very illegal money management schemes.  _ Mismanagement of funds _ .

He had been sitting on that knowledge wondering how best to deliciously use it when he had met Loki. He thought he might let it be forgotten. 

Except Loki hated their father and the family as much as Joe did, and so he had whispered into Hela’s ear his plans to topple her family’s empire. Compounding his brutishness with his bastardry, Joe had become public enemy number one: a blight on a reputation that he was actively threatening to blow up entirely. But, of course, killing Joe would do nothing; his plans are already in motion. The story – possibly the first piece of actual justice dispensed in his career – is working its way through the presses. It hangs in the air, a guillotine blade ready to fall. 

And now he has one more act of justice to dispense. 

“Put a song on for me, Bruce,” he says, changing the subject. “I wanna think about Loki.  I don’t know if I’m gonna see them again.”

Joe is expecting a retort about how he wasn’t supposed to catch feelings, and he’d argue until his face hurt that he hasn’t, but he does feel a swell of affection in his chest whenever he thinks about them. He wouldn’t call it love. He’d call it a mistake. 

Instead, Bruce asks what song. Joe was going to say  _ BIPP _ , the song playing in the club when he saw Loki that first time and was cursed. Instead, he leans back in the chair and says to play  _ Shark Smile _ by Big Thief, and closes his eyes as they crash through the guardrail. He can see the guardrail in his own vision, the blurring of the lines on the road as he careens out of control. Joe doesn’t like to be out of control. He jerked the steering wheel himself and now he’s stuck watching the world spin around him and waiting to crash through the windscreen. 

He leaves as the morning dawns, just after Bruce has cleaned and re-dressed his wound. It hurts in the kind of way that Joe needs insurance for. 

He’s not a sentimental guy, but the idea of leaving the brother he’s been protecting his whole life is a little hard, he has to admit. He’s reminded of Bruce leaving for college; and then he’s reminded of visiting Bruce and Tony and feeling the name  _ Bruce _ fresh on his tongue and watching Bruce’s face change every time he visited. Not just with the testosterone but with the kind of joy that was allowed to settle inside of him now he didn’t live under their father’s thumb. It wasn’t the kind of thing Bruce would ever forget, but he was finally growing in the sunlight and not stifled by the shadows. 

Joe didn’t quite grow at all. 

“Tell Bucky he did a good job,” he says at the door, and leaves. 

  
  


Bruce barely makes it to work on time, between trying to talk to Thor about leaving town as soon as possible and trying to figure out what’s going on in Joe’s mind. There’s a terrible finality to the way Joe speaks, and Bruce is worried that bullet wound will kill him fast. Thor, meanwhile, is going to make an offer on a house today; they’ll be on the road by tomorrow. Bruce has to tell Steve – and Bucky, who’s still living in his apartment – and he isn’t ready for that yet. 

There’s an album on his desk of pictures – and they definitely don’t belong to him. He takes them from the packet and begins to look through. The camera is pointed at a majestically suburban house. There are a few pictures of nothing much, and then one of the garage door opening; and Bruce recognises the car immediately. He recognises it because it accelerated on the heels of people who are now dead without justice, unconsenting corpses in cold graves. 

The last picture was clearly taken at a different time; it’s a photograph of a man leaving the house, massive and bulky, beastly and intimidating. 

There’s a note in the folder that says,  _ Thanos. I got it. –Joe _

Bruce resists the urge to sweep his desk in boiling rage. The anger screams through him, the persistent whistling of a kettle, and then goes quiet again. There’s a name. They have a name. 

Joe says he has it. Joe is going to reap. Joe was always angrier. 

He’s left Bruce free to tidy up the rest of the loose ends. It’s a strangely charitable act for him; though largely accidental. Joe would always have wanted to make the arrest. 

Bruce speaks to Bucky over lunch, having already broken the news of his imminent departure to Steve. Steve had not been particularly bothered, respecting that Bruce was a longstanding detective and one whose life was at risk so long as he and Joe shared a face. He encouraged the change of scenery. 

“You can stay in the apartment until the lease is over and I’ll pay for it since Thor is covering our new house,” Bruce says, still somewhat in disbelief of Thor’s incredible wealth. 

“Thanks,” Bucky says earnestly. “I’ll miss you. You’ve been a great partner, and friend. But I got a bit of good news of my own.” He grins conspiratorially, leaning in like they’re kids sharing a secret that he doesn’t actually want kept. “I’m gonna be moving in with Sam soon.” 

“What, romantically?” Bucky nods. “Oh, congratulations! That’s great!” Bruce smiles, leaning back in his chair and taking a swig of his coffee. “I guess I don’t have anything to worry about if Sam is taking care of you.” 

Bucky sits silent for a moment, and Bruce rewinds what he just said in his head, trying to find out where he said the wrong thing. He can feel the mistake hanging in the air. “I think I can take care of myself now,” Bucky says eventually. “I feel better. Not perfect, but… you know, progress.”  _ Not standing frozen in cereal aisles at 3am unable to decide which to have and being  _ stuck  _ there _ , Bruce reads. 

“That’s great too,” he says. “I wish I could stick around.” 

“Listen, I’d rather you didn’t get shot,” Bucky says with half a laugh. “You can phone me here or at Sam’s or send snail mail and I’ll write back. And I can always visit sometime. Would be nice to get a break sometimes. You deserve some time and space to yourself – well, and to spend with your new boyfriend, obviously. Just – I’m gonna be fine. Worry about yourself.”

“Come over for dinner tonight,” Bruce says. “I’m getting pizza and packing. Not that I have much to pack, I guess. It’s not much, but call it a leaving party.” 

“Alright,” Bucky says. “I’ll ask Sam if he wants to come.” 

  
  


Loki steps out of the police department and rests their hands in their pockets. They haven’t slept; they went to work straight from the hospital, and the shift was demanding with the added burden of worrying about the family empire. Not that  _ they’re  _ that worried, but everyone in the family is supposed to be an extension of Odin in every way, right down to the thoughts and feelings. Loki is just the loudest disappointment, and the easiest to take things out on. They put their headphones on and start up their Walkman, filling the dull city streets full of the homebound traffic with the sound of  _ Season of the Witch _ . The world takes a different hue with music. 

They walk to their apartment through the pretty little suburbs with their picture perfect lawns. On weekends, husbands or sons mow them and then drink a beer on the porch. Loki’s heels click on the pavement. They think of blood spatter on the walls, bedspreads stained red, a knife missing from the block in the kitchen. People dying in the streets and being forgotten when the sun begins to shine again. 

And as the thought comes, almost as if Loki willed it into existence, a gunshot rings out that punctures through their music. They drop their headphones around their neck and speed up – but they don’t run; they never run. What would be the use? 

They recognise the house that they come to as one they’ve seen before. 

In fact, they recognise the bulky red Hawaiian shirt of the man holding the gun, floating in the breeze like he controls his own gravity. In a way, he does; he always has. 

Joe puts the gun on the ground. The man lying dead is the suspect Loki told him about – Thanos – and yet Loki finds no regrets for passing on that information. The justice system is clunky and unequal; they probably never would’ve gotten to prosecute him. Vigilante justice is not the solution, but Loki finds it difficult to be angry about this particular act of vengeance. One dead man for all the injustices that fill the ocean of interdepartmental hatred. 

“Did you plan for me to arrest you, or is this a happy accident?” Loki asks. Joe turns, his face lighting up in a way that suggests the latter. 

“I thought the next time I saw you would be in hell or through a pane of glass,” he says. “Fuck.” He almost seems to fall toward Loki, and all of his words have a kind of vulnerability to their authenticity that Loki knows Joe would never expose freely or willingly. He has a dead man’s eyes. “You have such a pretty face, you know. Mischief right in the eyes. Kind of face that makes you feel things.”

Loki cuffs Joe and lets their hand run and linger along his wrist. They can’t touch intimately or kiss in public as a matter of basic decency. Loki  _ does _ have that reputation to maintain for themself. 

“I’m going to make a call,” they say. “Don’t try to run. I’m not following you.”

Joe smirks and looks like he’s considering it as Loki heads for the nearest payphone. They dial Steve Rogers at the 616. “Hello, this is Detective Laufeyson from the 1610. Could you pass on to Detective Banner that his brother has just been arrested for murder and taken into custody? My regards.” 

Loki is about to hang up. “Detective, will he be allowed to see his brother in custody at your department?”

“I can’t say either way, Captain Rogers. The department is fickle. I would hope they might extend some sympathy at this time, so he might well  _ try _ .”

“I see. I’ll pass it on. Thank you for your generous cooperation.” 

The first police car has arrived by the time Loki hangs up. T’Challa stays to begin cordoning off the scene, so Loki rides back to the station with Vision to process Joe. They watch him in the rear view mirror. 

“Why did you kill him?” Loki asks, though they know the answer already and know further still that it’s a complex one. Joe sucks air through his teeth as if he’s thinking about it. There’s faint blood splatter on the skin of his chest, where his shirt hangs gaping open at the collar. 

“He sent fucking letters,” Joe says. “I mean, the fuckin’ gall of this guy in so many ways, but those  _ letters _ with his fuckin’ little  _ pretty cursive _ – he made me mad.  Real mad.” 

It’s not the full answer, but a kernel of surprising truth. Joe is full of surprises. 

  
  


“One of us has to get out,” Joe says to Bruce when he’s allowed to visit, “and it wasn’t gonna be me. Don’t feel bad. Don’t waste the fuckin’ time.” 

Bucky and Sam are waiting outside for him. Bruce had told them just to go home, but they had, of course, insisted on staying. They’re playing tic tac toe in Bucky’s notebook with a kind of intense fury, and Bruce waits for them to finish the game before he approaches. 

“Well?” Sam asks. “He actually tell you anything or did he just do his cryptic asshole shit?” 

“He said enough,” says Bruce. “I used to regret being his twin, but now I don’t know.”


	6. epilogue: fell into the ocean

_ i became an ocean _

Bruce brings an old cassette from college with him in the car, and the sun rises as  _ The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth _ plays. He doesn’t know what he should be feeling right now. He feels everything and nothing, and so he just doesn’t think about it at all. 

  
  


Joe is expecting whoever has been assigned as his lawyer when the door opens. Instead, it’s Loki, wearing a slim line coat and looking phenomenal in their understatedness. 

“Run away with me,” they say. Joe cracks a gap-toothed smile. He had been expecting to go to jail; find himself in the hierarchy; break a few ribs and acclimatise to the taste of blood in his mouth. He had never thought of this because daring to dream of Loki was a dare too far. He thought it was over.

“Darlin’,” he says, standing up and accepting Loki’s hand. “I would be delighted.” 

  
  


The Odin finances crash. Bruce and Thor have to move out of the new house almost immediately and into a cozier apartment. Bruce takes a job as a physics lecturer and Thor works at a nearby sci-fi and fantasy genre bookshop. It isn’t the dream, but in a way, it’s nicer. 

He heard that his brother and Loki disappeared together, and hasn’t worried about him since. He knows they’re causing trouble somewhere new.

Sam and Bucky visit anyway, and Scott too. He asks how the marriage is going. Thor says he feels like they’ve found the other half of his soul. Bruce laughs. 

“The other half of  _ my _ soul is Joe,” he says wryly. “But Thor is home.” 

Home in that indescribable way: the way that something just feels  _ safe _ . Bruce has not felt at home in many places in his life, but finally he’s beginning to feel like he might be allowed that kind of security. He doesn’t feel like he’s teetering over the edge anymore. Home has been the sound of his mom’s records and the smell of her baking and her perfume; the sunlight streaming through the windows on a Saturday afternoon in college as he scribbles his way through an assignment – and now it’s rows of organised bookcases and the familiar path between the bedroom and the bathroom in the morning, the clashing of elbows as he and Thor try to brush their teeth at the same time in a small space. A small bath pressed up against a claustrophobic shower cubicle; the smell of Thor’s soap and shampoo and the feeling of his fingers inside Bruce. The radio station they listen to when they make breakfast. Watching the Discovery channel while Bruce marks test results and Thor knits or works on a drag concept. The feeling of being enveloped in Thor’s arms, and of waking up to the vision of him and feeling like the sun rose from the smile on their face. 


End file.
